Maths: Rugby World Cup Pitch Sizes Challenge

This week for maths another challenge was to answer questions on rugby pitch sizes. Some of the other questions were: What is the perimeter of a maximum size of rugby pitch? And, what is the area of a maximum size rugby pitch? After finishing all of the other questions, my group needed to create a DLO on how we found our answer.

Maths: Rugby World Cup Maths Challenge

This week LS2 has been learning about the rugby world cup. We needed to answer maths questions like; What is the difference in seating capacity between the largest and smallest stadiums and, what the the total combined capacity of all the Japanese rugby world cup stadiums is. The question that my group made the DLO on is if all the stadia are sold out each time then what will be the total number of spectators for all the pool matches combined.

Writing: 5 - 7 - 10 | My Favourite Cultural Celebration

Today for writing, our challenge was to write a 5 - 7 - 10 story based on our favourite cultural celebration. 5 - 7 - 10 is a writing challenge were you write as much as can for 5 minutes, talk to a friend for 7 minutes, and finish off in 10 minutes. For my story, I chose to write about Christmas. You can read the text I wrote below to see the points I go over, and a few extra details.

5 - 7 - 10 | My Favourite Cultural Celebration (Christmas)

Let me tell you about my favourite cultural celebration, Christmas. Christmas is a well respected holiday between my brother Latham and I. This is because on Christmas Eve, we can barely sleep!

My average Christmas starts off by waking up, and running to my brother’s room. I would ask for the time, and if it was at least 6:00 AM we could get ready. Then we would go to our parent’s room, ask if we could open presents, rush to the table, grab our Christmas sacks, run back to our parent’s room, and let the fun begin. In our family, presents were not wrapped. Instead we could grab anything from our Christmas sacks, and put it in a pile. We would then usually hear, “Aww yes!” or “Oh uh, thank you!” Then we would hug our parents, and thank them for the presents they got us.

Although that’s only the beginning. The next step for Christmas consists of us getting dressed, and getting ready overall. This is because later in the day we will be going to my grandma and grandpa’s house in Pakuranga, Auckland, along with everyone else in the family. Once we say hello to everyone, we would usually tell our cousins what we got. We would all hang out for a little while, until my grandma would bring out the food. This is usually buns, with chicken or ham and a plate of vegetables. Along with a few snacks, and hot cross buns.

After my dad eats all of the food like a garbage disposal, my cousins, my brother and I usually get a soccer ball, and play for a while. This then brings our day to an end. Christmas is my favourite cultural celebration, as I love spending time with my family, but most importantly I like it for the presents. This year, the date for Christmas is the 25 of December, 2019, and I cannot wait!

Reading: International Current Events

This week for reading Aung Naing, Joseph, Alex, Julian and I worked together to fill out a google map with international events. We needed to search through different news websites to find stories that fit the current event criteria. Our story for oddity is twin pandas being born in Belgium and for impact, bush fires.

Maths: Krispy Kreme Maths Challenge

This week for maths, the Heptagons, and Octagons were given a maths challenge. This challenge included 1 ginormous Krispy Kreme's donut box. Our challenge was to make an estimation of how many donuts were in the box. What we were given was a link to an email screenshot which showed a few of the hints we needed to be able to figure it out.  This included the diameter of each donut, the length and height of the box, and a good luck to schools trying to figure the answer out. For this activity I worked with Julian, and we had just as much fun creating the DLO as we did with finding the answer. You can see in our DLO our first estimations just by looking at the box, and the working out for the real answer.

Reading: Exploring Our National Current Events

New's editors make decisions every day about which current event stories they will run. We explored a bunch of different types of current events that are happening in New Zealand, thought about why the story made the news and plotted the location onto a Google Map. You can click on each pin to see what type of current event it is, and the name of the headline. For some locations, there are multiple pins, just zoom in by scrolling to see more, or click the + and - on the bottom left of the map.

Writing: Provocation and Opinion

What is a provocation? A provocation is an action or speech that triggers strong feelings about a topic. Not too long ago, a large supermarket chain announced that it would no longer sell energy drinks to people under the age of 16. You can see in the DLO that I created showing both perspectives, and my own below. I had a lot of fun creating this DLO, and learning about the topic. Although now I would like to hear your opinion. If you would like to, comment your's below.

Writing: Explanation: Should New Zealand Ban Plastic Straws?

Plastic straws, tubes of simplicity and convenience. An easier way to consume your favourite drink, and the supposed killer of this world. Think about a time you were at the beach, playing in the water and fighting off seagulls for your hot chips. You whip out a can of Coke, and you are one of two people. You either drink it cold out of the can, or you grab a nearby plastic straw of heaven and use that instead. If you are the latter then you need to make a choice. Do the right thing and put it in the bin, or drop it by the shore because the bin looks like it is a million miles away?

This is a problem we all face one day in our lives. Although the question still goes, should we just get rid of plastic straws. I’m just gonna let you know… we shouldn’t. Plastic straws are convenient, and are much better than their paper straw counterpart. Paper straws get soggy in matter of 0.01 milliseconds, they cost more money and time to manufacture, and half the time when you’re using one it breaks down and bits of paper make it to your mouth along with your drink! It ruins the experience, and that just defeats the purpose of having a drink. Although you might ask “Well if paper fails, why not use bamboo, as the shape is already a cylinder and it can break down?” Well might I add that bamboo straws would need to be thoroughly cleaned, and that bamboo can still have small twigs on its side.

Would you like to buy a bag of bamboo straws, and see bumps on the side due to there being twigs that were just snapped off? It is time consuming to make, unappealing, and if you are not using plastic straws as they “Harm the environment”, then why would you use paper straws which if you don’t know come from trees! Or bamboo straws which has bamboo literally in the name? At this point the argument of banning plastic straws is just going in circles with one upside plummeting into a fault. If plastic straws were banned, then nothing will change as they are the least of our worries when it comes to “Pollution” and “Saving the environment.” Plastic straws are a lifesaver! They don’t require us to tilt our heads back as if we snapped them just to take a sip of a drink, if you are sensitive to cold temperatures you don’t need to hold the can, and finally if you do want to use plastic straws, they are one of the cheapest things you can buy.

So this is why plastic straws shouldn’t be banned from New Zealand. They do wonders if you want a cold drink. If you think it’s bad that straws are getting stuck in the noses of turtles, then don’t drop them by the beach. So think about it… Do you really want to ban plastic straws?